Dear Sugar,
It’s you, not me!
For over 60 years, you have been my friend, my confidant, and my ride or die companion. I have turned to you when I was tired, hungry, sad, feeling unwell, and when my blood sugar was too low. I remember my sister and I sneaking chocolate bars from my parents’ grocery store when they weren’t home. I even binged on you when I was pregnant and breast feeding my kids. Sugar was never considered a drug and it was acceptable for babies, even found in jars of baby food. We gave our kids a cookie if they were sad or grazed their knees. I just recall my Mom telling me not to eat sugary foods because they caused cavities. So, I made sure to brush my teeth after indulging or binging on you.
You led me down the road to obesity. My weight kept increasing, as did my dress size, but I would go on the latest diet craze and try to reduce my “calories”, fats, and also the intake of deserts and cakes and cookies. I lost the weight and, sadlly, it always found me again.
I eventually began using artificial sweeteners, to sweeten my tea and coffee, in my daily multiple diet cokes, and home-made desserts when I tried to lose weight — chemicals that actually intoxicated my body, and continued my dependence on sweet drinks and foods, and you. You were even hidden in my healthy foods – particularly the fat-free foods from the supermarket — when I was on another quick weight loss diet. I never felt the need to give you up because you were never totally out of my system or even considered harmful by my friends, family, and the medical community.
And now, finally, I realize that you are an addiction and I am a sugar addict. For the first time, I truly understand that you are implicated in my migraines, allergies, and most of the pain and health issues that I have experienced during my lifetime. I finally get that you are the one that my brain craves when it seeks additional dopamine, serotonin, and other feel-good chemicals.
The joke is that as the vice president of a weight loss company for 7 years and then as a registered nutritionist for over 30 years, I have been asking my clients to cut back or even stop sugar, especially if they have candida or are pre diabetic or diabetic. I now realize that, at some level, I always knew that sugar wasn’t healthy. Yet, I would find healthier foods for myself with lower sugar content but still consumed sugar, gluten free bread, and starchy foods, believing that reducing my sugar intake was enough.
So, it is finally time for us to part ways. I will be reading labels even more carefully and will eliminate the things that stimulate the sweet taste that I thought was what I was craving. It protected me from delving deeper into my psyche to find out what traumas or emotions that sugar was helping me to suppress.
I am now ready to say goodbye to the sugar, flour, and starchy vegetables that are filled with glucose and fructose, have harmed my health, offer no value to my body, and keep me dependent on my old confidante — the devil on my left shoulder, who, for decades, whispered pleas for sugary delights into my ear.
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To learn more about sugar, read our other blogs:
Is Sugar Really As Bad As They Say? and Sugar Free is not what the label REALLY means
By Gilda Rovan, BA, RHN, ROHP, CHCP
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